


No Disgrace, No Calamity

by boundbyspells



Category: Entourage
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:02:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boundbyspells/pseuds/boundbyspells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric took a class on the Transcendentalists, once...</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Disgrace, No Calamity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dhobi ki Kutti (dhobikikutti)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhobikikutti/gifts).



It's three-forty-three A.M. and Eric feels like his eyes have grown so thin he can see out the sides and backs of them. No, not the eyes themselves, but that gelatinous shit around them, the stuff holding them together, but also his head. His fucking _skull_ is thin.

"E?" Lloyd calls from behind him, and Eric, without even turning around, can see Lloyd coming towards him. Well, not Lloyd, just his cell phone bobbing above the dancing crowd as he minces through. There are grunts from some of the party-goers, which Eric can hear below the music and the chatter; Lloyd is throwing elbows. "E!!" he shrieks, like he's naming a note he's trying to sing.

"Yeah, Lloyd," Eric says, and it's like he's living in slow motion while the party speeds on around him at a frenetic pace. And there's no way Lloyd heard him. But it doesn't matter. Lloyd is a bloodhound. Lloyd finds him.

"We'll get him home, Vince!" Lloyd shouts into his phone. "Wait! I can't hear you! I'll call back in a sec."

"Jesus, E, did some big frat boy tell you he respects you for your mind, and then slip you a roofie?" Ari asks from right in front of him, and Eric realizes his eyeballs and their new transparency have failed, because he never saw Ari coming. In fact, he can't see Ari now.

"I just took... whatever Billie gave me," Eric says, and he knows that's not the right name, but he can't remember the right name, or why he took what she handed him. Over his head, Lloyd mouths "BILLY WALSH?" in great big pantomime-of-the-lips, but he can't see if Ari mouths anything back. Ari must be standing right in his blind spot. Right where is optic nerve connects to the eye. That's what the blind spot is, after all, it's where your optic nerve plugs in and you can't have any receptors there to actually see anything.

"Has the negative pressure from all your cock-sucking finally caved in your brain, Lloyd? Nobody's even seen Walsh since he threw up his career all over Cannes like a giant hairball."

"I heard he's living as a woman in Sicily," Lloyd says.

"What the fuck," Ari says, but kind of indifferently.

"I've become a giant eyeball," Eric tells them.

"What the fuck," Ari says again, and then they're dragging Eric outside into the cooler, quieter air of night, which is a relief even though it's not cool like night should be; there's desert there beneath everything, and Eric can smell it coming up through the asphalt. It doesn't smell like reality. Nothing on the west coast smells right, or feels right; it's all too fucking optimistic to be borne.

"But what do I know, I'm a giant fucking eyeball," he mumbles.

"Jesus Christ, E, do we need to take you to the hospital?" Ari asks, handing his ticket to the valet. Lloyd is explaining on the phone to Vince that he's taking Eric home; Vince explains that Drama's place is getting sprayed for ants, and they're all finding other places to crash for the night. Vince hooked up with a girl hours ago. Maybe two girls. Eric remembers all of this only vaguely, and had planned on sacking out on the couch in his office, but he's too busy seeing to speak up. He is the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty, and there is beauty all around.

Now Lloyd is talking to Tom, and Tom has a headache, so Eric isn't going to crash there, and that's fine, because invading Lloyd's love nest seems wrong. Lloyd takes more shit than anyone. He should be allowed his castle and the kingship therein.

"I appreciate that, E. Where is everyone else landing tonight?" Lloyd asks.

Well, Turtle is staying with Jamie Lynn.

"No shit," Ari says, and Ari is impressed, which is itself impressive because Eric didn't think he said any of that out loud. Maybe ol' E's become telepathic.

"No, asshole, you're just so fucked up you don't realize you're talking," Ari says. "Get in the car. Against my better judgement about letting Irish mythological figures cross my threshold, you're coming home with me tonight." He waits, but neither Lloyd nor Eric react, so he adds, "That was a leprechaun joke."

Lloyd waves until they're out of sight. Eric bobs back and forth in the seat with the Ferrari's movements, weightless and held down only by the seatbelt Lloyd so carefully buckled over his lap. The car slows to a stop, and they are sitting in a puddle of red light so sublime that Eric can't even think in words for a second. He feels warm from the light, and whole from the light, and the gentle noise of the idling car feels like a sonata written just for him.

The air is soft, wetter than it has been, and a breeze kicks up, rustling nearby palms. They predicted rain, Eric remembers, and he hopes it comes soon. The whole world is anticipation, and Eric has been waiting for this rain for months. The car pulls forward, speeds on, and the wind flowing over him bears him up like a wave. Ari doesn't talk, and Eric doesn't talk, and it's the first time, maybe that Eric feels totally okay with the fucker. It helps not being able to see him, maybe. Maybe it helps that Vince isn't there.

Maybe it helps that Ari isn't talking.

Sometimes, Eric thinks that the real problem is that for Ari, nothing is personal, and for E, everything is.

When they get to Ari's house, Ari tries to help him inside, but Eric shrugs him off. "I can float," he says, and does just that, floats right inside Ari's house and up the stairs to the guest bedroom.

Ari points out the guest bath and the towels and everything, but Eric just pushes open the window and stands there, smelling the air, listening to the quiet, and he's not sure how long he's been there until Ari is handing him two aspirin and a glass of water and trying to get him to get in bed.

"You are going to feel like the shit you usually look in the morning if you don't get some sleep," Ari says, and suddenly, for the first time since that girl handed him the tablet on the dance floor, E can see Ari--Ari who is standing over him with his disarmingly friendly face and charming grin. Eric can see everything about Ari Gold, all at once, everything that Vince sees in him, everything that Mrs. Ari must see, everything that even poor, pitiful Lloyd must tell himself he sees. E doesn't know what it is, doesn't know if it's even real, but suddenly, his hand is curling up around the back of Ari's head and pulling his face so close he can smell scotch and shaving soap, and he's then he's kissing, fucking _kissing_ Ari Gold.

Ari jerks back fast. "What the--" But he doesn't seem to know how to finish that sentence. For a homophobe, he seems more confused than afraid. Or angry.

Eric stares at him and says, "I am nothing; I see all."

And Ari just smiles. "Do you still think you're an giant eyeball, E?"

"Nah," E says, and smiles back, downing the aspirin and the water. "I know I am. And I float."

Ari just shakes his head and heads towards the door and then he stops and says, "Fuuuuuck," real slow, and E sees what he should have seen instead of seeing Ari, and that's Mrs. Ari, wearing a silky nightgown and a weird expression.

"_He_ kissed _me_, baby," Ari says, pleading, and Eric is laughing and snuggling into the expensive hypoallergenic down pillows of the guest bed.

"I can see that, Ari," Mrs. Ari says, and even though Eric closes his eyes and Ari closes the guest room door, E is still a giant fucking eyeball, like in that Emerson essay he had to read in senior English. He can see everything. He can see that she is thinking about the kiss she witnessed, he can see that she's turned on and she's about to ride Ari through their mattress, because she can't _quite_ bring herself to say to Ari, "Go back, do that again, do all of it. I want to watch."

But she definitely wants it, Eric knows, wants to see them come together and kiss and fuck, each one unyielding, and now he's turning over and over and over, because the bed is too comfortable for sleep. She wants it. And Eric wants it, too.

And Ari? E doesn't know. Once more, Ari is standing in his blind spot.

A breeze blows in through the open window beside the bed, and small rain droplets spatter his cheeks. He reaches down to pull on his cock, and dreamily imagines Ari and Mrs. Ari fucking outside in the downpour. He can no longer see with acuity that which happens beyond his physical line of sight, but the rain that touches him is the rain that touches them. They all come, groaning, together, tonight the citizens of the same fantasy, the same rainstorm, the same world.

* * *

_There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty._

\--from _Nature_ by Ralph Waldo Emerson


End file.
